Blogging in 20th Cent

At the beginning of the semester, we were assigned to each keep a running blog about the books that we were reading. It was tough, at first, to actually think of things to write about, especially when I thought that these things were supposed to be polished--after all, they were for public viewing. Well, though initially I was a bit bummed to get was I thought was just extra homework, I ended up really loving this thing. I think that there's something about getting my thoughts down in a more tangible way that really helps sort everything I'm thinking about the novel. It makes it a lot easier to contribute to discussions when I actually have opinions and things to say for myself, (usually formed the night before on the blog), as opposed to merely finding myself agreeing with my peers but with nothing to add, which seems to happen a lot when I can't sort anything in my brain out, and I get distracted by my doodles.

As far as paper versus electronic journaling goes, I've never done the paper version, with the exception of a book journal kept in Sophomore English about books we read outside of class. I enjoy the online blog format, though, mostly because my handwriting is illegible and the sound of pencils scratching irks me a lot. But, I must say, there is something else that's nice about the online way: I like having a time where I can just sit down and bang out a couple paragraphs about whatever I'm thinking about--even if they don't make sense, like this one. If I carried around a notebook, I'd probably be more prone to putting out a few sentences whenever I had a free minute, and it's be a lot less coherent. Let's keep up the blogs.